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James: The inside story on Rob Ford’s self-inflicted destruction

Toronto&rsquo;s political system is equipped with numerous fail-safe mechanisms to keep a mayor out of legal trouble. Mayor Rob Ford managed to crash through every one and land in a heap, steps from being tossed out of office.

Mayor Rob Ford arrives at his City Hall office on Monday, the day the ruling came down removing him from office.
(TARA WALTON / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

Toronto’s political system is equipped with numerous fail-safe mechanisms to keep a mayor out of legal trouble. Mayor Rob Ford managed to crash through every one and land in a heap, steps from being tossed out of office.

How it happened is an unprecedented tale of arrogance, hubris, incompetence, stubbornness and, in the words of Justice Charles Hackland, “willful blindness.”

It’s been reported that Ford ignored as many as six letters from city council’s integrity commissioner to comply with the rules that now threaten to abort his mayoralty, midterm.

What many may not know is the extent to which integrity commissioner Janet Leiper, Ford’s council allies and opponents, staff, advisers — Justice Hackland, even — tried to avert the pending disaster.

This is the story of how Ford burned through all the firewalls erected to protect him from himself.

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The saga began when Ford was a penny-pinching Ward 2 councillor, constantly attacking the way councillors spent taxpayers’ money. Ford created a website that exposed how they used their $53,000 office budget to assist sports teams, or to help community groups stage festivals. He railed against councillors who attached their names to the annual environment days. And if a councillor bought an espresso machine to provide visiting constituents with a warm drink, he slammed it as a scam.

To underscore how colleagues used their office budgets as a slush fund — all legal, mind you — Ford used his own family wealth to finance his city hall office. He provided his own stationery and postage. While the average councillor filed annual expenses of $40,000, Ford filed a ridiculous $2.

This endeared him to voters and ticked off councillors who argued they couldn’t afford to bankroll their office and, as such, were being unfairly attacked.

Some tried to force Ford to spend tax dollars. In the end, he was forced to report to the clerk all his office spending — including personal funds. That way, councillors argued, a rich councillor could not use private funds to outspend others and have none of it recorded for public scrutiny.

By presenting himself as Mr. Clean, the spending police, Ford attracted attention even as his fame grew on talk radio and among his anti-government, anti-taxes, anti-union constituency.

Ford announced his candidacy for mayor during one of his frequent appearances on AM 640 on March 25, 2010. Six weeks later, Leiper received a complaint from a citizen.

The complainant, not a ward constituent, had received a donation request from Ford on his councillor letterhead, postmarked March 19. The money was for Ford’s football foundation, a charity set up in 2008 to buy football equipment for struggling high school teams.

The complainant wrote that the letter “left me uncomfortable. While it was not stated in words, there was a clear sense of an implied suggestion that a donation to his charity might serve me well should he be elected mayor.”

It wasn’t the first such complaint. In December 2009 and February 2010, Leiper had warned Ford to separate his private fundraising efforts from his public councillor’s job and not use city hall letterhead to raise money.

Now, she advised Ford again — twice in person and twice by telephone — to no avail. Ford responded: “I do not understand why it would be inappropriate to solicit funds for an arms-length charitable cause using my regular employment letterhead.” The complaint had no basis in policy or law, he wrote. Besides, a “worthy cause would be undermined by an inconsequential complaint about the use of letterhead.”

Leiper asked him to reconsider. Councillor Ford refused to amend his response.

The two previous complaints give insights into Ford’s thinking.

“On Nov. 11, 2009, a member of the public provided a copy of a mailing received from Councillor Ford which contained the same “Dear Friends” letter requesting donations to the football foundation, along with a copy of the news article, a business card from Rob Ford, Councillor, a fridge magnet for Rob Ford Etobicoke North Councillor and a promotional sticker for Deco Labels and Tags, the Ford family business.”

Ford agreed it was improper to include the Deco sticker in the mailing. But he added a couple of telling twists that would recur as he plunged deeper into trouble.

For one, city letterhead paper isn’t city property because he paid for it out of his own pocket, Ford argued. Secondly, his fundraising falls within city business because it assists underprivileged residents. And, he maintained, the Toronto Community Foundation, which administers his charitable foundation, had approved the content of his fundraising.

He was wrong on all counts and Leiper told him so, Dec. 10, 2009.

City council had established the position of integrity commissioner to assist politicians with issues not clearly black and white. When in doubt on a code of conduct issue, councillors were to check with the commissioner and go with her advice or risk a complaint and a finding of violation.

Leiper was clear that Ford’s actions were improper. By “asking citizens for money for a personal cause on councillor letterhead, there is a risk that you could be seen to be using your influence as a councillor to raise money for your private foundation,” Leiper wrote to Ford.

She reported that “Councillor Ford was advised that lobbyists or developers who might want to seek his support in his role as councillor might feel that they could do that by making donations to his named foundation.

“Finally, I identified the City of Toronto logo as being property of the City of Toronto that is subject to the Use of Corporate Logo, Donations and Sponsorships policy to be used only for officially sanctioned City of Toronto business.”

Separate your councillor business from your private fundraising efforts, Ford was told. He apologized to the complainant, but would continue to violate the code of conduct.

• Ford frequently used office staff and city resources to solicit funds and manage the foundation on city time.

• Ford’s mayoral campaign website boasted that his foundation had donated $100,000 to eight schools. Leiper’s investigation uncovered records showing the foundation had raised only $37,294.68 and assisted four schools since its inception.

• There was a “lack of rigour to record-keeping by Councillor Ford that included deleting or discarding the source material used to create the mailing lists, and the details of financial reporting.”

• Ford failed to provide records showing his donor list — records Leiper needed to check to see how many were registered as lobbyists. Leiper asked Ford if he was aware he was soliciting from lobbyists. He first denied knowing, then acknowledged that he knew two of them.

“I asked him if he had been lobbied after he had received a donation from them. He responded that it was ‘ridiculous to say something like that.’ Neither he, nor his assistant, responded to requests to confirm whether they had met with the lobbying firm.”

• Leiper found 26 businesses who donated to Ford’s charity between August 2009 and May 7, 2010. Eleven had been lobbying city hall for business during this time. Seven of the 11 were registered to lobby Ford. The lobbyists donated $3,150 to Ford’s charity.

• One donor ($400 in 2009) received “multi-million-dollar contracts spanning 2009-2011,” awarded by the city through competitive bidding.

If there were any doubts as to Leiper’s concerns, her Aug. 10, 2010, report to council erased them.

Strict rules on both sides exist to ensure city hall lobbying is transparent and conducted with integrity. She quoted directly from Justice Denise Bellamy, who headed up the Toronto Leasing Inquiry into one of the city’s biggest scandals:

“When public office holders, elected or not, accept meals, gifts, entertainment and other favours from those attempting to influence them, they corrode public trust.”

Bellamy’s “list of problematic corporate benefits” included donations to charitable events sponsored by public office holders, Leiper said. She detailed the improper nature of Ford’s actions:

“In this case, Councillor Ford solicited and received donations from lobbyists to his named private foundation, on City of Toronto official letterhead from his office at city hall where he conducts his councillor business.

“In return for these donations from lobbyists, Councillor Ford received the benefit of additional funding to his foundation, which he used to enhance his reputation both as a councillor via his website and as a candidate by including this information in his campaign materials.”

Ford usually called all donors to personally thank them. Sometimes, more money was requested. “This was not an “arm’s-length” arrangement,” Leiper wrote, as Ford “combined the roles of public office holder and private citizen. It would be understandable if those who made donations concluded that they were ‘doing the councillor a favour’ by making a donation to his foundation.”

Leiper then addressed head-on the argument that the donations were for a good cause.

“The validity of the charitable cause is not the point. The more attractive the cause or charity, the greater the danger that other important questions will be overlooked, including who is being asked to donate, how are they being asked, who is doing the asking, and is it reasonable to conclude that a person being asked for money will take into account the position of the person asking for the donation.

“Where there is an element of personal advantage (in this case, the publication of the councillor’s good works, even beyond what they had actually achieved), it is important not to let the fact that it is “all for a good cause” justify using improper methods for financing that cause.

“People who are in positions of power and influence must make sure their private fundraising does not rely on the metaphorical ‘muscle’ of perceived or actual influence in obtaining donations.”

More than two years later, Justice Hackland was to lift those three last paragraphs, word for word, in his judgment. He said Leiper’s was “an excellent report” which he did “respectfully endorse.”

It had a similar effect on council, led by former mayor David Miller. On Aug. 25, 2010, council approved Leiper’s recommendations that Ford must reimburse the lobbyists’ $3,150.

In opposing the move, Ford made a critical error.

When Speaker Sandra Bussin called for the vote she specifically reminded Ford he had a conflict of interest in that the matter involved a financial benefit to him. Ford ignored her and voted.

“Having ignored my warning, there was nothing more I could do,” Bussin said in an affidavit filed in the conflict of interest case.

Ford wasn’t done. He refused to reimburse the lobbyists, and ignored six letters from Leiper urging him to comply.

Ford won the mayoralty in October 2010. Fifteen months later, Leiper reported his noncompliance and asked council to enforce its order, effective March 2012. She had exhausted her tools of compliance; now it was up to council.

Leiper noted one final defiance on Ford’s part: Instead of repaying the $3,150, Ford wrote to the donors and then told Leiper they did not want to be reimbursed.

Unimpressed, Leiper reported that to ask the donors to forgive the repayment was piling impropriety on top of impropriety. But this was now a new council, led by Ford himself. And some of the normal barriers to impropriety had been removed, thanks to new political alliances.

Ford’s political lieutenants attacked Leiper’s report, Leiper herself, and the previous council decision. While Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, Ford’s attack dog, publicly excoriated the report, some councillors were working behind the scenes to resolve the matter. (Ironically, Mammoliti was the first ally to jump ship and resign from Ford’s executive committee Monday, the day the court ordered Ford removed from office.)

Councillor Anthony Perruzza, a left-winger not on Ford’s team, says he approached Ford’s staff on the night of the council vote last February with a face-saving motion. Perruzza would move that Ford be forgiven the repayment if he conceded he’d done wrong and not debate the issue.

Meanwhile, Councillor Michael Thompson, a Ford ally, was in the mayor’s ear.

“I told him, ‘Don’t speak on the matter,’” Thompson recalled Wednesday. “And just before the vote, I said, ‘Just step outside for a minute, don’t vote.’”

But Ford did speak, influencing his colleagues. Before the Perruzza motion was crafted the debate was cut short, and Ford voted with the majority in a 22-12 decision to rescind the previous council decision and free him from repaying the $3,150.

Citizen Paul Magder took Ford to court, where the mayor argued his vote was inadvertent, an error; that council didn’t have the right to order the repayment; and that the amount was so small as to make the violation insignificant.

Justice Hackland searched for every crack in the law to avoid using the sledgehammer on the mayor of just two years. But Ford bulldozed ahead, destroying himself with his own testimony.

Ford protested strongly against paying the $3,150 — so “his pecuniary interest in the recommended repayment of $3,150 was of significance to him,” Hackland had to conclude.

He probed whether Ford’s actions could be considered inadvertent or an error. But, on the witness stand, there was this exchange between Magder’s lawyer, Clayton Ruby, and Ford:

Ruby: You deliberately chose to make the speech you did and vote the way you did?

Ford: Absolutely.

Ruby: And you don’t regret for a moment having done that?

Ford: Absolutely not.

Ford had kicked down the final protection with one last defiant statement.

Knowing all of the above, and following the dictate of the law, Hackland found Ford guilty and ordered his removal from office by Dec. 10. On Wednesday, Ford will seek to suspend that decision, pending an appeal to be heard Jan. 7.

Stating the obvious, as kindly as he could put it, Hackland wrote in his decision:

“It is difficult to accept an error in judgment defence based essentially on a stubborn sense of entitlement (concerning his football foundation) and a dismissive and confrontational attitude to the integrity commissioner and the code of conduct. In my opinion, (Ford’s) actions were characterized by ignorance of the law and a lack of diligence in securing professional advice, amounting to willful blindness.”

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